Who Speaks French?

CTMike · June 2021

I am currently using DuoLingo to learn French so that my dual US-Canadian granddaughter and I can make fun of her father (my son) without him knowing. 😎

Having trouble trying to keep the following straight:

- Mange vs manges
- Why is a croissant masculine (un croissant), but an orange is feminine (une orange), yet the color orange is masculine again?
- Is the letter ‘n’ at the end of French words always silent, as in chien, or is it very subtle and I’m just not hearing it?
- When to use s’il vous plait vs s’il te plait vs veuillez?

I’m sure I’ll have many more questions as I progress.

Merci

lousubcap · June 2021

@paqman to the rescue.

paqman · June 2021

I can help you, busy with work at the moment, as with everything french, the answer is complex

fishlessman · June 2021

is the DuoLingo french or canadian french. i dont speak french but know they are not the same

CTMike · June 2021

fishlessman said:

is the DuoLingo french or canadian french. i dont speak french but know they are not the same

Well hell, the damn language is hard enough without having to learn a different dialect? My understanding is that it is traditional French.

Botch · July 2021

CTMike said:

fishlessman said:

is the DuoLingo french or canadian french. i dont speak french but know they are not the same

Well hell, the damn language is hard enough without having to learn a different dialect? My understanding is that it is traditional French.

Heh. I stupidly took a year of Latin in high school, and it dropped my entire GPA an entire point. Latin involves dialects, genders, declensions, tenses, and a bunch of other things I can't/won't remember. No one speaks Latin anymore, but the entire year DID help me on one question on my ACTs. What an incredible waste.
As an engineer, I would've been much better served learning German, Japanese, or (later) Korean; but that's water under the bridge.

Gulfcoastguy · July 2021

I took Spanish in high school. I remembered just enough to tell a landscape worker to stop watering the plantings because the idiotic electrician had left active 3 phase power connections exposed. I thing my exact words translated as "No water! Dead meat! bzzzz! and pointing at the wires" He spoke English a bit better than I spoke Spanish and replied "No more Mexican?" Then I hopped in my truck, chased down the "electrician" and engaged in speaking some "Contractorese".

fishlessman · July 2021

CTMike said:

fishlessman said:

is the DuoLingo french or canadian french. i dont speak french but know they are not the same

Well hell, the damn language is hard enough without having to learn a different dialect? My understanding is that it is traditional French.

its very simple, a potato in france is Pomme de Terre and in montreal its patate. then depending where in canada you are a canadian pork spread is gorton, or corton, or creton.

paqman · July 2021

CTMike said:

I am currently using DuoLingo to learn French so that my dual US-Canadian granddaughter and I can make fun of her father (my son) without him knowing. 😎

Having trouble trying to keep the following straight:

- Mange vs manges
- Why is a croissant masculine (un croissant), but an orange is feminine (une orange), yet the color orange is masculine again?
- Is the letter ‘n’ at the end of French words always silent, as in chien, or is it very subtle and I’m just not hearing it?
- When to use s’il vous plait vs s’il te plait vs veuillez?

I’m sure I’ll have many more questions as I progress.

Merci

@lousubcap thanks for calling me out because I did not see this thread and still don’t see it when using the mobile app so not sure what is going on here. Maybe the off topic category is filtered out on the mobile app?

@CTMike
I am afraid that my answers will not help you or make your learning exercise easier. There is a reason why french is the language of diplomacy and that the authoritative version of international treaties is often written in french. It is a complex and precise language where small variations can make a huge difference. In french, I would say that exceptions are the rule!

Although there are many regional dialects, I would say that here in the Gatineau/Ottawa, the one we use is close enough to traditional french so your granddaughter will understand you. We are also known for mixing french and english in the same sentence, we call that frenglish!

That being said, there are definitely major differences in regional slang. If you ask a French dad about his gosses you would be asking about his kids. But ask the same question to Québécois man, and you’re inquiring about the state of his testicles… 🤣😂

- Mange vs manges —> It is pronounced the same. It is simply a different conjugation. I typically scored above 95% in my french grammar classes and I still constantly need to refer to conjugation tables when writing french documentation. We have what we call groups of verbs that will end with e or es depending on their group but even within groups there are exceptions so it is a complex topic. It is important when it comes to written french but not so important when speaking it.
- Why is a croissant masculine (un croissant), but an orange is feminine (une orange), yet the color orange is masculine again? —> That is a perfect example of exceptions being the rule. You just need to know them all.
- Is the letter ‘n’ at the end of French words always silent, as in chien, or is it very subtle and I’m just not hearing it? —> It is not silent, it is pronounced in combination with the previous letter. If it was silent, in the example of chien (dog), it would mean to poop!
- When to use s’il vous plait vs s’il te plait vs veuillez? —> s’il vous plait is a polite to ask and typically used when talking to an elder or a client but can be used in any context. s’il te plait sounds more like a polite request and would be used when an adult politely asks a kid to do something but when changing the tone of voice it would then become an order. In an informal context, they can be used interchangeably. “Vous” is the polite form and used when showing respect to an individual (parents, elder, client, stranger, boss) but younger people rarely use that form nowadays. My mom used “vous” when talking to her parents, I also used it when talking to them but not to my mom. You basically use “vous” when you want to show respect to an individual or when addressing a group. That being said, some people don’t like to be addressed as “vous” and will actually interject and ask you to use “tu” instead. I don’t think that anyone would be offended being addressed as “tu” especially if the interlocutor makes an effort to speak french. Even if you learned french and spoke it every day for the last 20 years, you would still have an accent.

I think that @caliking would (most likely) have no accent at all from day one if he started learning french today. I lived in India for a couple of months a few years ago and made friends who learned french. None of them had an accent when speaking french despite some of them having a strong accent when speaking english (a language that they learned from a very young age).

paqman · July 2021

fishlessman said:

CTMike said:

fishlessman said:

is the DuoLingo french or canadian french. i dont speak french but know they are not the same

Well hell, the damn language is hard enough without having to learn a different dialect? My understanding is that it is traditional French.

its very simple, a potato in france is Pomme de Terre and in montreal its patate. then depending where in canada you are a canadian pork spread is gorton, or corton, or creton.

Most will commonly refer to “patates” but everyone will know that it is a “pomme de terre”. Restaurant menus will likely refer to « pomme de terre ».

Cretons is a staple around here and commonly sold in grocery stores but I make my own. Older people will often pronounce it croton but write is as creton. I’ve never seen them referenced as corton or gorton but when doing a google search it looks like it is a new england thing; probably because of the pronunciation/english accent. I learned something today!

fishlessman · July 2021

pretty sure the french spoken here in new england is pretty bastardized. two pieces of cheap white bread and some frenches mustard and im all over that gorton. i can still remember when broom hockey was a thing out on the ice

Botch · July 2021

So how do you say "stupid b*tch" in French?

Image: https://thespun.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Screen-Shot-2021-06-26-at-10.39.17-AM.png

CTMike · July 2021

Botch said:

So how do you say "stupid b*tch" in French?

Last I heard she had fled the country, and was being sought by police and potentially sued by race organizers.

fishlessman · July 2021

Botch said:

So how do you say "stupid b*tch" in French?

if you cross the border from maine into canada the french are no help getting you to a beer store, they know no english. swear at them and they explode with english

i musta just made that up, i couldnt possibly know that.....

paqman · July 2021

fishlessman said:

Botch said:

So how do you say "stupid b*tch" in French?

if you cross the border from maine into canada the french are no help getting you to a beer store, they know no english. swear at them and they explode with english i musta just made that up, i couldnt possibly know that.....

no speak english

fishlessman · July 2021

stumbles to bar, looks up at waitress and mumbles duuhrrrr bluuhrrr. two labatts blues show up. french can also be faked

caliking · July 2021

paqman said:
…

I think that @caliking would (most likely) have no accent at all from day one if he started learning french today. I lived in India for a couple of months a few years ago and made friends who learned french. None of them had an accent when speaking french despite some of them having a strong accent when speaking english (a language that they learned from a very young age).

I did not anticipate getting pinged in a thread about speaking French

Interesting that you made that observation too, re: Indians learning to speak other languages. My BIL was learning Spanish some time ago, and he was told he had an Argentinian accent when he spoke Spanish.

I learned to speak some very basic Italian years ago, and did a pretty decent job of it. Compared to other Americans around us, who sounded way worse.

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